Growing hardy, nutmeg and large-fruited pumpkins - varieties and care
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THE BEST VARIETIES OF HARD-SHORTED, NUMECAT AND LARGE-FRUIT PUMPKINS AND CARE OF THEM
A rare garden does without a pumpkin. Ola is very versatile and constantly surprises in the form of original novelties. The time is coming to cook a lot of delicious, dietary and often unusual dishes from it - So, what's new in the pumpkin family.
PUMPKINS - THREE LEADERS
We mainly grow three types of pumpkin (Cucurbita sp.) - large-fruited (C. maxima), hard-barked (C. rero) and nutmeg (C. moschata). They can be distinguished by the appearance of the leaf, but the easiest way is by the stalk: in a large-fruited one it is round in cross section, in a hard-barked one it is faceted, all in scars, in a nutmeg one it is thin, flattened, with an expansion at the base of the fruit.
Among themselves, the species do not pollinate, which cannot be said about the varieties, which are many in all three. As a result of this imperceptible process, unusual, one-of-a-kind pumpkins often grow. If you want surprises, sow your seeds for next year. Well, if you want fruits with certain properties, it is better to buy seeds of a particular variety from a reliable manufacturer. You can, of course, isolate and pollinate the flowers yourself, but this is a separate issue.
Within each type of pumpkin, there are varieties and original varieties.
See also: Pumpkins and zucchini in the beds with organic fertilizers - my reviews
HARD HORN PUMPKIN
This is actually the pumpkin itself, as well as varieties: Fordguk, gymnosperm, decorative, and also zucchini, squash, crookneck, straightneck.
It is an early maturing species with unsweetened pulp, suitable for making a side dish. It is hard-skinned pumpkins that are most often eaten unripe and soft (the same zucchini). They have little fiber (0-3%), they are nutritious, quickly digested and easily digested. Sometimes the flesh can break into fibers, like spaghetti squash.
Let us dwell on the insufficiently common interesting hard-barked varieties.
Gymnospermous pumpkin (C.pepo var. styriaca) forms seeds without peel, they do not need to be peeled! There may be a thin transparent film, but it is easily Straitnek - also a type of zucchini, but with more even, non-curved fruits. Plants have smaller bushes compared to crookneck, and yellow fruits with resistant bark. From young unpeeled fruits, delicious salads are obtained. Straightnecks are more tender and tastier than zucchini, moreover, they are more fruitful.
VARIETIES: F, Sunray, Saffron, Super pi k, Multipik, Golden Girl, Daisey, Gold bar.
LARGE PUMPKIN
Despite the name, the species includes varieties not only with large, but also with small portioned fruits, which are convenient to store and can be used at a time.
Large and medium. They have sweet pulp (sugar content - from 6%), rich in carotene (provitamin A) and pectin (gelling) substances. The fruits lie for a long time, they are baked, boiled, stuffed, added to pies, cereals, casseroles, pancakes. Seeds are also good - large, with a white peel, rich in protein with essential amino acids, as well as macro - and microelements.
VARIETIES: Parisian (Parisian), Banana, Winter sweet, Medicinal, Marble.
Portion. These are bushy and short-braided varieties with short internodes and relatively small fruits weighing 1-3 kg, convenient for eating and storing.
VARIETIES: Smile, Baby, Russian, Amazon, Granddaughter, Muscovite.
Japanese portions. They were bred in the Land of the Rising Sun, but gained great popularity in France. There they are called potimarron - "chestnut gourd". Some actually take on the flavor of hot, sweet chestnuts when baked.
"Japanese" ripen in our middle lane. Their flesh is dense (sometimes it is even difficult to extract the seeds), dryish, but with a high content of carotene. They are baked whole, cutting off the top of the lid. The seeds are removed inside and stuffed with meat, rice with vegetables or apples with raisins.
VARIETIES: Uchiki Kuri, Oranje Hokkaido, Kogiku.
The main thing in growing pumpkins is good nutrition and sufficient moisture. It grows well on compost heaps, spreading in different directions and giving weighty fruits, which, due to large leaves, are often found only at harvest.
Reference by topic: Pumpkin - photo planting and growing from A to Z
MUTTE PUMPKIN
The pulp of this pumpkin is often orange in color, the sweetest. The shape of the fruit varies from elongated oval to rounded, flattened, segmented. In some long-fruited varieties, the seeds are located only at the end of the fruit, where the flower is attached, which is very pleasing to the housewives.
Butternut squash varieties are mostly mid- and late-ripening, so they need 2-3 months to ripen after harvest. They contain 2-5% starch, which gradually turns into soluble sugars.
From fruits with the addition of apples (25% of the volume), a wonderful jam is obtained. A delicious jam or marmalade is prepared with a small amount of citrus fruits for sourness and flavor. Candied fruits from this pumpkin can be used for confectionery - cakes, muffins, etc.
VARIETIES: Prikubanskaya, Muscat, Pearl, Interception, Vitamin, Vita, Candied fruit, Lung a di Napoli, Muscade de Provance.
There are later-ripening nutmeg pumpkins that do not ripen in our country and also do not reach ripeness during storage - this is a group of Butternut varieties, the so-called butternut. They are outwardly attractive, grow to the right size, are quite edible, but they are not particularly tasty, as the lack of heat affects. The pulp of the fruit is light yellow, dense and dryish, less sweet than that of mid-ripening nutmeg pumpkins.
Pumpkins can be eaten freshly picked right from the whip, but they will be tastier if they lie down for at least a month, gradually ripening right in the house. When cutting, it is necessary to save the stalk so that the fruit does not rot. A ripe pumpkin can be stored for up to a year without losing its beneficial properties.
PUMPKINS - VARIETIES AND VIEWS ON VIDEO
© Author: M. DOLZHENKO, Candidate of Agricultural Sciences
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Decorative pumpkins are a real decoration of my garden. With their help, I decorate the arch and walls of the summer kitchen. In autumn I make beautiful compositions that I keep all winter and delight the eye with bright colors.
I usually grow two varieties: Borovichok (pumpkins grow small, with a white stem and a bright orange hat) and Dutch Baby Beer (round orange fruits barely reach 15 cm in diameter and weigh up to 500 g).
Borovichok is a completely decorative variety. Ripe fruits are very hard, there is little pulp in them, and it is tasteless. But Baby Beer pumpkins are not only beautiful, but also edible. I grow all pumpkins through seedlings. I sow seeds in the second half of April, one at a time in small cups with wet, rotted sawdust. I plant in the garden in holes filled with humus (2-3 shovels), wood ash (1 tbsp.) And any complex mineral fertilizer (1 tbsp.). I make sure that the distance between plants is at least 1 m.
Further care is reduced to weeding, watering and timely tying of lashes to vertical surfaces. I collect fruits when the stalk dries.
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Lose weight from friendship with a “fatty”
Pumpkin is remarkable in that it contains a rather rare vitamin T. It is thanks to him that the orange fruit belongs to the category of “fat burners” and is recommended in dietary nutrition.
Stewed and baked pumpkin can be considered an ideal side dish for pork, beef and other fatty foods. Such an additive to meat will not allow fat to be deposited on your waist.
And thanks to the vitamin E contained in the fruit, pumpkin has a unique ability to slow down the aging of the body. It also has properties to prevent the appearance of wrinkles and age spots, alleviate pain in the lower back, reduce the feeling of coldness in the extremities due to insufficient blood flow.
Pumpkin is also a good diuretic, which is determined by the presence of potassium salts in its composition. And the pectin substances contained in it in large quantities contribute to the removal of toxins and cholesterol from the body.
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If the pumpkin crop is not harvested on time, then when the first cold weather sets in, they can freeze slightly and will be poorly stored in the future. But there are varieties whose fruits simply do not have time to reach full ripeness during the summer season. Of course, they can ripen at home, but this will affect their keeping quality and taste.
Meanwhile, you can speed up the ripening of the orange beauty in the garden. Of course, the timing will be different every year because it depends on the weather conditions, but in general the simple methods I have described are enough to allow the pumpkin to reach ripeness.
First of all, a bush, on which there are many flowers and fruits, wastes its strength in vain. Therefore, already at the end of July, take a closer look at how many pumpkins you will leave on the plant, because until the end of August - the beginning of September, you need to pinch the young shoots, remove flowers and extra small pumpkins. The stem itself, on which the fruits grow, should also be pinched, leaving 3 leaves above the last “ball”. In small-fruited and portioned varieties weighing up to 3 kg, 4-5 pumpkins can be left on the plant, in large-fruited varieties - no more than two.
Be sure to feed pumpkins once a week with infusion of ash and twice as often with infusion of superphosphate, this will speed up ripening. If you need to take care that the pumpkin does not rot, you can put plywood under it or mulch the soil with sawdust.
Council
If mice were seen on the site, scatter black peas or red hot pepper powder around pumpkin plants, then rodents will not spoil your crop.
Note
A pumpkin is considered ripe when its rind becomes firm. Try to scratch it with your fingernail, if it doesn’t work out, the fetus can be removed.
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I always keep the pumpkin under the table in the bedroom. Far from battery. I make sure that the fruits do not touch each other, if possible, I also separate them from each other with paper partitions. Usually the harvest can be kept like this until spring. And this year I noticed that one of the pumpkins had a wet bottom. I cut it - inside the pulp was strong, the skin did not soften anywhere. It doesn't look like the pumpkin got sick. What is this phenomenon and is it possible to keep this pumpkin further?
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This happens if the pumpkin is not fully ripe. At the bottom of the fruit is the remnant of the pistil of the flower, which looks like a small tubercle. If the pumpkin is not ripe, then this tubercle sticks out, and besides, it is still juicy and has not had time to dry. When you put the pumpkin on the bottom, then the entire mass of the fruit falls on this tubercle, and it is crushed.
At the same time, liquid flows out of it, and the pumpkin may begin to rot in this place. If the scarring of the lesions occurs faster than their infection, then the wounds will heal and the pumpkin may well be preserved. To avoid this phenomenon, you need to put foam rubber or tourist rugs under the pumpkin fruits. In the old days, for example, pumpkins were stored on a layer of straw, which helps to distribute pressure on the entire lower part of the fruit.
Anton LESHCHEV, Cand. of sciences